They still argued. Nathan thought Aaron gave advice too quickly. Aaron thought Nathan hid requests inside complaints. Now they stopped and named it.
“Are you venting or asking me to do something?” Aaron would say.
“Venting.”
Or Nathan would ask, “Do you want a solution or do you want me to say that sounds awful?”
Aaron usually wanted the second and hated admitting it.
Three months after the funeral, they chose the destination.
Not a grand trip. Their childhood fantasy had involved crossing half the country. The tin contained less than two hundred dollars once they counted it, plus the folded bills their mother had added over time.
Nathan suggested a train to a lake town three hours away where their mother had taken them once as children.
Aaron objected that choosing a place she had already taken them defeated the point of going somewhere new.
Nathan reminded him of the photograph from the station.
They argued for twenty minutes.
Then both started laughing.
“She planned this part,” Aaron said.
“Absolutely.”
Before the lake trip, Aaron almost canceled. A training schedule changed, not enough to forbid travel but enough to make the weekend inconvenient. He stared at the message and felt the familiar relief of having a respectable reason to retreat.
Then he recognized the feeling.
He called Nathan.
“Something came up,” he said.
Nathan went quiet. “Of course it did.”
The bitterness arrived so quickly that Aaron nearly answered in kind. Instead he explained exactly what had changed and what had not. He could still go if he rearranged two tasks and accepted a very early return.
“So are you telling me you can’t come,” Nathan asked, “or are you telling me it got harder to come?”
Aaron sat with the question.
“It got harder.”
“Those aren’t the same thing.”
“No.”
The old version of Aaron would have heard accusation. This time he heard precision.
“I’m still coming,” he said.
Nathan exhaled. “Okay.”
“And if they actually change it again and I can’t, I’ll tell you that too.”
“Okay.”
